Join Caine’s Arcade Global Cardboard Challenge!

A lot of us toss our old cardboard into the recycling without thinking about it, but a boy named Caine Monroy figured out that you can do A LOT with cardboard. He made a cardboard arcade, then filmmaker Nirvan Mullick created a film about it that received millions of views, and before you knew it Caine and his arcade were an inspiration to creative kids (and adults!) everywhere.

So much has happened since the original film, which BTW, brought EVERYONE to tears because Caine is so darn cute and inspiring. “When I first posted the film, I had a goal of trying to raise $25,000 for Caine’s scholarship fund,” explained Nirvan. Over $200,000 donations came in for Caine’s college fund! Celebrities like Justin Timberlake tweeted about the arcade. Some stars even visited it IRL (Jack Black rolled in with his kids). People from across the globe have visited the arcade too. Most importantly though, Caine’s Arcade has inspired over 100 schools in 9 countries to build their own cardboard arcades! It literally sparked kids to get creative on a different level.

Photo: (Cain’s Arcade)

It’s the one year anniversary of the film being made, and the people behind the film are debuting the Imagination Foundation in honor of the big date. This cool new foundation, which wants to “to find, foster and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in kids,” has partnered with ProSocial for the Global Cardboard Challenge. It’s inviting YOU (and your little siblings, cousins, etc.) to get in on the creative fun of making your own neat stuff out of cardboard. The challenge will be taking place October 6. Below is a second video from Nirvan about Caine’s Arcade, the new foundation and it even shows kids making things like robots and sophisticated games out of cardboard. It’s a little over 8 minutes long but it goes by fast. Trust.

So, all you creative people, here’s what you gotta do: go to the Global Cardboard Challenge website to host an event or find an event near you. Events can be at homes, at schools, at neighborhood parks. It’s going to be a “global day of play” and you get to make whatever you want with cardboard.

This event is also hoping to help kids experience greater imagination and creativity. You know, kids who make spacecrafts out of cardboard now might be working at NASA in the future. Seriously! In the video, NASA Chief Engineer Rob Manning talks about how he used to play with cardboard spacecraft as a kid and now he’s um, creating spacecrafts which land on Mars. So go out there and make some cardboard box dreams come true.